


Shadows and Secrets, Or: The Boy Who Wasn't There

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [151]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, But He's Still There, Codependency, Gen, So Pietro is dead at the start of this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 11:45:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13317402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: “They don’t understand,” she whispers, when the building collapses. In the darkness the shadows curl around her, almost a body, a ghost, that wraps shadowed arms around her and holds her tight. “They don’t understand you, brother.”They don’t have to,whispers the ghost.I am here for you all the same.





	Shadows and Secrets, Or: The Boy Who Wasn't There

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RedSummerRose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedSummerRose/gifts).



> I didn't mean to write it, it just slipped out! No but seriously, I wrote this for a songbird ask game prompt oops. I wrote it while listening to [_I Remember_ by Tristam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1qO2pxzHNE) for RedSummerRose.

Wanda is born, and she has no twin. Instead, the thing that slips out after her is the body of a boy, empty of breath.

In the war torn world of Sokovia, to have two children living from one birth is a rarity enough as to not be expected. The boy is grieved and buried and Wanda is raised without her twin.

 

* * *

 

Except... except in the night she gurgles, and something echoes back, like a child who isn’t there. As she grows she looks to a corner of the room, as though someone waits. In the schoolyard when a fight starts, no one ever lays a finger on her, the girl who watches into space, who smiles at them, and who whispers out a secret they’d rather have been hidden.

Wanda has a twin, and yet she doesn’t.

 

* * *

 

“They don’t understand,” she whispers, when the building collapses. In the darkness the shadows curl around her, almost a body, a ghost, that wraps shadowed arms around her and holds her tight. “They don’t understand you, brother.”

 _They don’t have to,_ whispers the ghost.  _I am here for you all the same._

 

* * *

 

Wanda lives on the streets, fierce and deadly, a street witch as much as anything and as powerful as those long established, more so. She stares into a corner, reaches her hand into shadows and speaks with a surety she should not have. “Go to this shelter, they will house you.” “Go to this baker, he will have bread he is getting rid of.” “Go to this clinic, they will treat you.”

These are places she has never gone herself, and yet she knows.

 

* * *

 

Wanda Maximoff, the twin without a twin, settles into the abandoned church in the centre of the old town, and the children of the street flock around her.

She lights a fire with matches they bring her, wraps herself with a shawl she pulled out of rubble, one corner still dipped in blood, the blue and scarlet weave of it a purple like a bruise as her hands dance over the flames and she tells them stories. 

She tells them stories of dragons, of smoke and fire, and the children hear a bomb and imagine a monster and know these things to be one and the same. 

She tells them stories of angry priests and wanderers without a place that is only their own and how the hunt and chase began supposedly searching for witch demons. The children hear the stories, and remember the frantic cries of those who would see others dead for their gain.

She tells stories of witch demons, dancing, of ghosts, following, of a forest and a mountain and a witch of crimson and red and the children look to her and name her their protector, a witch of red and blue.

Wanda offers them her hands, and offers the small blessings of a street witch.

 

* * *

 

Wanda is eighteen. Her twin was never alive. Still, he stands at her shoulder, a shadow in the flapping of her shawl as she screams out protests at yet another dictator self-installed in the high seat. At yet another army man who has called all those loyal to him and sought power more than his to take. At yet another year in which Sokovia will not know peace.

Wanda cries out, lifts her fist to the pulsing beat of the protest, and  _burns._

And then a man steps out, flanked by soldiers.

 

* * *

 

_Power,_  whispers the ghost of her brother at her shoulder.  _Pow **ers**. Something more than we are_. 

Wanda reaches a hand into shadow, and grips the intangible thing that has followed her all her life.

“Yes,” she says. “Do you think we can trust it?”

The children in the alleys duck back, watch their witch, hair blowing in the wind, shawl flapping at her shoulders, as she whispers into air, stares off into space.

She does this before she guides them, she does this when she advises them, she does this as she offers her small street witch blessings and they know what she is doing.

She is casting a spell.

 

* * *

 

Wanda walks the route up to the castle. She does not agree to sit in the truck, does not go up with everyone else. She stops and pauses, thinks and waits, and lets the ghost at her shoulder out to listen and learn and discover what he can.

A familiar spirit, a spirit of family.

 _It is true,_  he whispers when he comes back, days later.  _They have the sceptre, the staff of that Asgardian. They have power. They have the means to make us more._

She looks into his shadow, she thinks and mouths out more words than only he can hear. He replies in the breath of the wind, in the newspaper tumbling down the street, in the children, tucking themselves small in the alleyways as they await her verdict.

Finally, she nods.

“I am going,” she tells them. “Go to Andrej, ask street witch Snowsmoke for aid.” 

She offers them her hands, makes small street witch blessings.

“I will return,” she promises them. “Or I will burn.”

This is the promise she may never break.

 

* * *

 

The castle is a bare bleak thing as she enters, her shadow ever present behind her. He guides her path, shows her the offices she must reach. She opens the door and the man with the monocle almost throws himself into the wall in shock.

“Your experiments,” she says. “No one is surviving.”

He looks at her, the man in the monocle. Sees her a small-yet-tall street witch, hair wild and tangled, red-blue-purple shawl tucked close around her shoulders, small hands folded into each other, palms dirty with charcoal and ash from drawing sigils in the dust.

“I would like to join,” she says, and he never notices the shadow at her shoulder.

 

* * *

 

It burns. They pour viruses into her veins, pour power into her body, strap her down to a bed as she twists and screams and shouts. Beneath her, her shadow sends out dark fingers, the lights flickering, dark fingers wrap around her wrists and ankles around the restraints.

Wanda screams once more, and the lights go out.

 

* * *

 

When the lights come back on, there are two people curled on the bed.

 

* * *

 

“Brother,” she whispers, tracing the shape of his face. He’s not entirely there, still a ghost, but he is not a shadow now but some creature made of radiant light, like a beam of sunlight through a window. “You’re  _here.”_

He smiles, bright and sharp like a knifeblade in sunlight and darts forward, presses a kiss to her forehead. “I have always been here,” he whispers. “I will always be at your side.”

He takes her hand in his, and folds away into nothing.

 

* * *

 

“What is that?” asks Strucker and List. “What was that?”

“My brother,” Wanda says. “Never born.”

They frown, look at the scarlet and blue that dance out of her fingers. 

 _A created image,_  they think.  _A hallucination made real._

They are allowed to think this, for her brother never appears to them again.

 

* * *

 

_It’s hard,_  he says,  _to appear like that. To be...._

“Physical,” Wanda whispers into scarlet secrecy. In her shadow, the shape of her brother nods.

 _Here,_  he says, and nudges her hand with a finger of shadow.  _Try moving your hands like that._

Wanda twists her hands anew, and the target explodes.

 

* * *

 

When the Avengers arrive, Strucker says she is not ready. Maybe this is true, she isn’t sure.  She stands back, reaches a hand into shadows, and whispers a secret to her brother.

And her shadow vanishes.

So long as she is in darkness, no one ever notices this.

 

* * *

 

_They are here,_  he whispers when he gets back. He is a shadow, and the dark is as fast as the light, filling in where it is not in dark lines.  _He is here, Iron Man. **Stark.**_

Wanda curls hands, lets scarlet magic pulse, lets the blue coil out in a nimbus of power, lets the two mingle to purple around her.

Casts her spell.

“Let us fight, then,” she says.

 

* * *

 

She is everywhere, split between two places. She uses all her brother’s shadow-speed to cause trouble in the field and as the Avengers advance she readily retreats, a knifeblade smile on her face.

She falls back to the castle, backs down the corridors, descends into the darkness of the basement where her shadow - her brother - can stretch long dark fingers into everything.

And Stark arrives.

Her body is singing with power. All the scarlet, all the red, her rich powerful purple, and her brother leans forwards at her shoulder, a shadow curling out of the vast mane of her dark hair as she watches Stark watch the sceptre.

 _Well?_  he whispers.  _Are we just going to let him take it?_

Wanda smiles, and casts a nightmare into Stark’s mind.

 

* * *

 

She heads down to the city. She is herself, yes, but she is also her brother, all shadowed space and the play of light in air, and she ghosts her way down to the city, takes her place in the church where the children throng to her within minutes.

She smiles, makes her hands dance, and watches the children’s faces as they see the real magic she can now make.

“A witch-demon,” one says. “A  _real_  witch-demon.”

“ _Our_  witch-demon,” says Andrej, Snowsmoke, the street witch who watched her children for her when she could not. 

She smiles at him, and sends scarlet to light a fire, blue to chase the shadows, and tells the children a story of a man who makes weapons.

 

* * *

 

A man of metal comes to the church.

The children dart back, cower into the shadows they have watched their witch stare at and whisper too so many times. Their witch’s brother spreads out shadowed arms around them, and hides them in inky blackness.

“Why are you here?” she asks, the vast shadow of her brother at her back.

The metal man looks at her, looks at the shadow, cannot see the vanished children and laughs.

“I had come,” he says, “To change the world. But I see you are already doing that.”

 

* * *

 

His name is Ultron. He means to save the world.

 _Sister,_  whispers her ever-present shadow.  _Please._

And so she follows.

 

* * *

 

She steps into Klaue’s office, shadow-brother at her shoulder, and the darkness of the ship seeps out around her, follows her feet like tar, drips from her fingers like ink.

Klaue stares, and gibbers as she calls her scarlet.

“I am here for vibranium,” she tells him. “All you have. The man I work for needs it.”

Ultron is gone, long before the Avengers arrive, but for one drone, and a witch, waiting in the wings.

 

* * *

 

The drone is strong and is powerful, and Ultron is in that body as much as his own, back at the castle, but the drone is only there to distract Stark.

The witch steps out. The shadows follow.

And nightmares are made painfully real in the minds of the Avengers.

 

* * *

 

Shadows cradle her as she twists in pain, shadows kick Clint Barton through a window. 

It is something not quite shadows and not quite light that carry her to the mudflats, and it vanishes in the light of the sun.

 

* * *

 

_The last one,_ whispers her brother.  _We could-_

Her hand rests on his invisible arm. “We will not. We must return to the children.”

The light-shadow of her brother nods, and she calls for an Ultron drone, to take her back to Sokovia.

 

* * *

 

“What happened?” clamour the children. “What did you do?”

Wanda tells them a story, smooths their hair, tucks them into sleep in the rooms of the castle Ultron has let her borrow. He prefers the basements so she is given free rein of the rest, and she has found the barracks, used her scarlet and blue and full fledged purple to clean them out and make them safe.

Andrej, Snowsmoke, the street witch who watches over even the street witches, stands at a window. 

“Are you sure this is safe?” he asks. Wanda shrugs. “Are you sure this is right?” he asks, and Wanda shrugs again. For all his small size, for all his young age, his eyes are as piercing a blue as the bleak pale sky as he comes to stand over her and stare into her eyes as she smooths out the hair of the youngest of the children.

“Then  _why?”_

And Wanda stretches out a hand into shadow.

 

* * *

 

Seoul is...

Seoul is anger, and fury and betrayal and bright powerful magic cast out with all her strength. She cannot shield the children now, the children living above a pit of evil where Ultron might send up drones to take them as vengeance on her but here, now, she can free Helen Cho from this mind-magic nonsense, can yank the Cradle gone, and make her way through the city as fast as light and shadow.

 

* * *

 

“Maximoff?” says the archer, when he finds her holed up in a warehouse, shattered shards of Ultron drones around her. _“What?”_

Wanda casts out a hand, holds back the wave of shadow behind her and the archer blinks... and  _sees._

 _“Oh,”_  he says. “Oh  _shit.”_  

“Ultron is mad,” she says. “This Cradle was meant to be him, but more. But it cannot be,  _it must not be._  We must change this, make this help us, and then we must go to Sokovia.” Her face is streaked with tears, her hair wild as she spins as Natasha leads the others through the doors. “He may have killed the children already,” she says. “We cannot let him have the world.”

 

* * *

 

They spend several long and frantic hours travelling across the ocean. They spend several more as Stark and Bruce struggle to add JARVIS to the mess that already exists inside not-Ultron’s skull.

And then lightning crashes through the window.

 

* * *

 

“Vision,” says Thor. “He was in my Vision, he is  _of a Vision.”_

Wanda nods, understands. “A creature seen and prophesied.”

“Where is he, then?” asks Stark. “Ultron?”

Wanda turns, her shadow coiling out of shadows to back her in darkness, even as scarlet lights and blue come dancing out of her wrist. “Sokovia,” she says, and her eyes are wet with tears. “Novi Grad. The castle. He may have killed the children already. But the rest- He cannot have the rest. I will not  _let him.”_

 

* * *

 

Sokovia is...

Chaos and chaos and chaos again. Wanda darts through streets she knows like her own veins, wreathed in scarlet and bright blue and dark shadow.

“Get out!” she calls, and all the children still on the street flee at the sight of a street witch telling them to run, at the sight of a street witch wreathed in magic. “Get out! Get beyond the city limits!”

The children run. The adults run.

The citizens pour out of Novi Grad in a wave.

 

* * *

 

The city rises and Wanda calls bright blue and strong scarlet and powerful purple. At her shoulder the shadow of her brother rises, strong and dangerous and tears drones out of the air.

The Avengers can see this, but not the shadow, but for the archer.

“What  _is_  that?” he asks when they have a moment to breathe, heading for the church to rejoin the others. “The shadow. The others can’t see it, what  _is it?”_

Wanda looks at him, eyes red and blue, purple and shadow, and sees his eyes as sharp as a hawk’s. “My brother,” she says. “The ghost of him.” she reaches a hand into the inky black around her. “He never left me. He always helps me.”

 

* * *

 

“I will protect it,” she tells the Avengers. “I stayed here. I lived here. I will protect the switch.” She stares into shadow, at a shadow reaching out fingers to her and whispers words they cannot hear. 

And the shadow lifts off from her shoulders.

 

* * *

 

It is harder to fight without her brother at her back, it always has been, but she can do it anyway,  _must_  do it anyway. She can feel her brother, her ever-present and yet no-longer-present shadow flying through the city, guiding people from homes and to the big buildings where everyone gathers. He is a shadow, yes, but those who have lived on the street recognise the shadow and the shape and know the familiar of a street witch when they see it.

They run the streets, he guards the gauntlet.

At the switch, Wanda fights back Ultron’s armies.

 

* * *

 

The boats are loaded. The battle is almost done, and Wanda casts out scarlet as shields and blue as bullets, and purple in pure power turning metal to dust. And then she feels something she did not think was possible.

 

* * *

 

In the dust, behind a car, curls the body of a boy.

 

* * *

 

Scarlet lashes, blue boils out, purple power sets a shield over the switch as Wanda heads for the being that tried to take her shadow from her.

 

* * *

 

Clint gets the kid he was carrying to the last boat, runs back to the shadow-made-real that lies, gasping for breath, in the dust.

There are bullets, five of them, lodged in his body, but he is not bleeding blood but some kind of ichor, like sunlight and shadow. When Clint moves to lift him, he is as light as air.

 

* * *

 

_Oh,_  thinks Pietro, as his ribs ache, and his throat hurts from breathing and he can feel gravity pulling him down as it never has before.  _This is what it feels like to die._

 

* * *

 

_“A ghost cannot die,”_  and that whispered piece of knowledge is the only thing that makes Wanda sure she will feel the shadow of her brother around her shoulders again. Any moment. Any-

But he hasn’t returned to her. Any other time his shadow was cut to ribbons by light he flew back to her shoulders in a moment, wrapped himself around her, close to her skin, and sucked in her shadow until he was strong.

And he hasn’t.

So Wanda tears out Ultron’s heart.

 

* * *

 

Wanda walks through the streets. She walks to the church. She feels the power of her purple shield, and Thor flying high above.

She breaks the shield.

 

* * *

 

Vision carries her from the battlefield, to the Helicarrier, and it is only there she learns-

“Maximoff!”

The archer is sprinting through hallways towards her, bow waving above all the heads in the corridor. 

His clothes are stained with ichor.

“Your brother,” he says. “He’s  _real.”_

 

* * *

 

Wanda sits by the body of a brother she’d never had, a ghost given flesh, and waits for him to heal.

His hand feels ever more solid in hers.

 _A ghost cannot die,_  she remembers. 

If it does, she thinks, perhaps only then it can live.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave comments!


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